De Heem, Still-Life with Grapes

Jan Davidsz. de Heem

This spring the Hood Museum of Art acquired Still-Life with Grapes,
a spectacular painting by seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Davidsz. de Heem
(1606-1683/84). De Heem's sophisticated handling of pictorial elements, so
delighted in by his contemporaries, is clearly visible in this sumptuous work
of art. The various objects of the composition are deftly woven together and
set into a space that seems continuous with our own. The glowing colors and
sparkling highlights enliven the picture visually and, above all, create an
impression of richness and splendor. The beauty of the painting, like its
content, attracts the viewer's attention and provides "sweet fodder for
the sight."

De Heem, a native of Utrecht who spent most of his adult life in the city of
Antwerp, was an extraordinarily famous and influential painter of still-life in
the northern and southern Netherlands and a leader in the development of
pronkstillevens (fancy or sumptuous still-lifes). Then as now he was
widely admired for his uncanny ability to simulate the appearance of fruit,
flowers, and beautiful objects fashioned from silver, gold, and other precious
materials.

Still-Life with Grapes, a pronkstilleven that probably
dates from 1655-60, testifies to de Heem's standing as an artist of the first
rank. A triumph of illusionistic painting in its rendering of textures, space,
and the effects of light, it presents a lavish display of natural and man-made
objects, including grapes and pumpkins, a costly silver-gilt goblet, delicate
wine glasses, and a velvety green cloth with gold fringe. Every item has been
depicted with utmost attention to visual truth, and the smallest details—the
curling tendrils of a grape vine, the myriad tiny insects, and even the
reflections of the artist's studio window on the bosses of the goblet—have been
meticulously and faithfully represented. The close observation and superior
craftsmanship of Still-Life with Grapes easily met the expectations of
seventeenth-century Netherlanders, who placed the highest value on an artist's
ability to record objects with a "sincere hand and a faithful eye,"
in the words of natural philosopher Robert Hooke. These expectations coincided
with an equally deep interest in the natural sciences and optics. Animal and
plant life were being studied and documented as never before, and previously
unknown worlds were revealed in the lenses of the microscope and telescope.
This new science was marked by the conviction that knowledge was to be gained
chiefly through vision. "I admit nothing but on the faith of the
eye," remarked the English philosopher Francis Bacon in 1620. "Those
who aspire to discover and know . . . must go to the facts themselves for
everything."

About the time de Heem painted Still-Life with Grapes, the Dutchman
Johann Comenius published his new theories of education. Seeing is believing,
he argued, and the good scholar studies the physical world first-hand as well
as through images, learning how to distinguish one thing from another. Visual
discrimination was therefore the key to the acquisition of knowledge. De Heem's
painting reflects this goal in many ways: the metal goblet is compared to
vessels made of glass, the exterior of the goblet is juxtaposed to an interior
view of its lid, three different types of grapes are represented, and the plump
grapes are compared to the globular bosses of the gilded cup. This picture
invites its viewer first to distinguish carefully and then to revel in the
colors, shapes, and textures of things.

De Heem’s painting offers much more than a parsing of the physical world,
however. Like many other still-life paintings from the period, it contains a
hidden layer of Christian symbolism. To a seventeenth-century viewer the
grapes, wine, wheat stalks, and corn are traditional symbols of the Eucharist,
the peach is a symbol of salvation, and the many insects, because of their
short life spans, collectively refer to death. The Eucharistic meaning of the
painting is emphasized especially by the goblet in the center of the
composition: framed by a stone arch just barely visible in the painting's
background, it is given pride of place as if it were a chalice containing the
Communion wine. The meaning of Christ’s sacrifice is also suggested by the
cascading arrangement of the grapes, wheat stalks, and corn, especially in
relation to the nails depicted in the upper left and right corners of the
picture. Perhaps an allusion to the lowering of Christ’s body from the cross,
it also brings to mind Christ’s words in John 12:24: "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." A masterful
combination of Christian content and superbly rendered forms, Still-Life
with Grapes encourages the viewer to ponder the central mystery of
Christianity as it celebrates objects of the material world.